Get those levels up, idiot!

With un-working designs and lower encounter rate patches it's merely "a litte better than that dragon slayer game for the Turbografx-CD" rather than "there but for the grace of God play I." The title is also a little silly to me, it's like one of those words where you mean to say something but then your tongue slips and you accidentally say something else at the same time, like "very bad" and "no way." Like this:

"Hey dude, my parents are out of the house for the weekend, I thought we could sit around, take our clothes off and watch The Umbrellas of Cherbourg together?"

"...vvvvvay."

I'm racking my brain here but the only thing about this game that even comes close to being remarkable is that Yukihiro Takahashi, of YMO fame, was apparently the music supervisor for this, which means I guess I have to give the OST another listen sometime because ah... are you sure? If they never told me in the credits (my man was the first name that came up), then as far as I know I would have never guessed, from what I remember in the music.

Otherwise even from a YouTube watch I could tell there's nothing in here better than anything you can get in an early Ys, and now that I'm Marie Kondo-ing my backlog unfortunately this game is so-so enough to not make the cut as "something that might spark joy if I play it for real." I'm being ruthless here, folks. Not even the Xak series made it either.

The first was a not very good search-action platformer, and now this one is a very okay run and gun with occasional shmup and “how many y’all like auto-scrolling levels?”

Everyone has their own level now, and their theme song only plays during that level, which, I mean, I’m not gonna sit here and pretend I didn’t ask for that last time. Also, you don’t really get to pick who you play as anymore, you know, an array of classic Konami characters each with their own strengths and weaknesses tailored to intelligent level design. What do you think this is, Little Samson? No, you jump on platforms and shoot, and hope that you get to play as Goemon or Contra man for sixty seconds instead of the baby. I hate that baby.

I like how Goemon’s level is a little drawn out and makes you wonder when it’s going to end, and the contra level takes less than two minutes, in nods to each of their original games. You also get to see a huge R-Type crawl for the classic Gradius enemy ship with barriers that you have to shoot through, and there’s a TwinBee level with Star Fox perspective. I can’t believe I made it to a day I got to see TwinBee ass.

A game that dares to ask “what if EVERY Konami game had Castlevania’s awful stairs?”

Recommended if you like classic Konami characters such as Simon Belmont, Goemon, uh Getsu Fuuma Den I suppose, and I dunno is TwinBee in this too? Kind of funny that the theme song for each character plays when you select them, and not during that character’s level, which means if you want to you can go through Dracula’s castle jamming to Goemon’s goofy feudal Japan tunes.

Also recommended if you love riding the rightmost edge of the screen’s goddamn nutsack to scroll forward. Konami sure thinks you do!

Decent Garrett representation, although it’s ugh, spelled wrong! Guys, it’s with two R’s and two T’s. “Garet,” for crying out loud. “Hello, my name is Garet, and these are my friends ‘Mikel’ and ‘Bilee.’” You see, it sucks when I do it to your name, doesn’t it? Garet, sheesh. It doesn’t even compute for my phone, even my keyboard is trying to autocorrect it to “Harry.” I know, Tim Apple, how do you think I feel about it? Oh god, what if they pronounce it in some weird way, some stupid high-fantasy inflection? Oh no, oh dear me, oh my word, oh fuck ass and shit, even. I hope there’s no voice acting in the DS sequel, if I hear one of them call out to Gah-rotte or some shit I just don’t think I could bear it. All that aside, I do like that the Garet here is a major himbo.

What’s that, the game? Oh, it’s pretty good! I love the little react faces they give to the characters whenever they are angry, sad, happy, etc. It’s maybe not as good as Mario pantomiming dialogue while transforming into other characters in Super Mario RPG, but it’s close! At the very least it shows that someone understood the limitations of a cute SD top-down JRPG and then did something about it. How do we convey the party’s disappointment at this series of unfortunate events? Give them dialogue bubbles with cute frowny faces.

Also the fighting system is uh, something. I’d call it neat if I were in a good mood, and goddam deranged if I wasn’t. You get a handful of pokemon who give you super spells, except when you use them your stats and available normal spells go down temporarily, which sucks except the pokemon spells and super summons are strong enough to knock out the bosses in one or two turns, except when maybe it might be better to use your normal stats and spells? It’s also totally playable if you assign the Pokémons to the matching character by element, but if you mix and match elements they create thousands of permutations of different character classes which take years of scholarship to master. I don’t get it, and I just got done playing it. I’m the Argentinian calculating weird math lady meme right now.

It also has one of the silliest bad endings I’ve seen since “attack lavos at level one” in chrono trigger. You can literally refuse the Joseph Campbell call to adventure, which will earn you a screen that says “and then the world ended. Try again, dummy!” People complain about the Dragon Quest series asking the player questions that force you to answer yes, and I respond, what’s the alternative, shit like this?

Aside from that, it has a story that I’d call “a smidge better than Secret of Mana,” which, as a known JRPG liker, is really all I’m asking for when I boot up one of these things. Not to mention I’d also call it “only half done.” Coincidentally the second one just came out for switch online, I just might give it a spin on there

Update: I’m being told that there is indeed no voice acting in the DS golden sun, and that the Garet in that one also has an excellent dad mustache

On the boulder roll stage in the beginning, you have to be like at the ass end of the right side of the screen. Say what you will about the nineties lion king games but at least in their big chase levels they gave you ample notice when you’re about to trip over a big ass rock in the ground. I don’t think kid me would have even made it past this level.

Also as a Last Crusade supremacist it is vfunny to me that the very final boss of the whole game is Walter Donovan immediately post-wrong-Grail-drink as a walking skeleton, with the goofy crusader standing in the sidelines.

Imagine if they took Trouble Shooter and somehow made a better version of it somehow. Like imagine Trouble Shooter is a brand of sake you like. And maybe somehow somewhere, someone found like a much older and rarer version of that sake, and opened it up and poured it for you, and when you tasted it, it was at once familiar to you yet somehow much more refined and fulfilled, that much closer to actualizing its potential into exactly what it was supposed to be all along. It’s kind of like that, a much higher quality bottling of sake, a vintage even.

Not since “The Lord of King” have I seen such a limp wet towel of a Japanese original name for a game that was mercifully changed into something forgettably appropriate instead. “Crying”? Are you kidding me? Did you stub your toe at the same time you were coming up with that? What’s the sequel going to be, Giggling? Grow the fuck up, we’re calling it Bio Hazard Battle. It’s a battle, you’re fighting biological enemies, and yeah sure, I guess they’re a hazard to your immediate health. If you don’t like it, then you know who’s really going to be crying? The localization team, when they suddenly find themselves packing up their shit out of their offices because corporate just saw the sales figures for North America and realized no nineties boys wanted to buy a game called Crying. CRYING, for fucks sake

Exactly what I thought a SNES Jajamaru game would be for better or worse. Maybe a smidge too long, and what if I told you there’s an ice level with a slippery floor? 😮

I looked at a YouTube playthrough to figure out how to roll through a low hanging wall and I couldn’t help but notice how significantly better the music was than what I was playing. Mine sounded like a demo track, about twenty seconds long, and the same for each stage. Turns out if you go to the options in the main menu there are two choices: enhanced music and enhanced sound effects, which is very odd to me. “Whaddaya want, good tunes or good sounds? You CANNOT have both!” Also sucks that I found out only after getting a little more than halfway through 😔